Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry.
I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us this week.
While Amazon continues to refine its new car-shopping platform with customers and dealers in certain U.S. markets, the online retail giant is already eying its next endeavor: used cars.
Fan Jin, the director of Amazon Autos, told Automotive News this week that the platform would be “getting into used cars soon.”
Up to now, Amazon has been partnered with only one OEM, Hyundai, and they’ve exclusively been focused on new vehicles.
Amazon expanded their program from a closed pilot to what they called a “public beta” at the end of 2024, enabling customers in 48 markets to use the site to purchase a Hyundai vehicle.
While Hyundai has been Amazon’s launch partner, the online retailer has expressed interest in working with other manufacturers beyond Hyundai, but have yet to do so.
Amazon Autos is now in 68 markets, up from the 54 it announced alongside the premiere of a national ad campaign with Hyundai in January.
If Amazon does get into used cars next, they could potentially onboard a lot more dealers more quickly, not being just limited to one OEM brand.
But getting into used is in some ways more complex, because each dealer will have their own finance partners, which will add to the complexity on the back end.
In any case, word of Amazon getting into used cars has to be on the minds of the automotive marketplaces like Autotrader, Cars.com, and CarGurus, who might soon be competing with Amazon for used car shopper eyeballs.
So, with that, let’s transition to Our Companies to Watch.
Every week we highlight interesting companies in the automotive technology space to keep an eye on. If you read my weekly Intel Report, we showcase a company to watch, and we take the opportunity here on this segment each week to share that company with you.
Today, our new company to watch is VizAuto.
VizAuto empowers dealership groups by integrating every data set—not just the DMS—to create dynamic visualizations that enable actionable insights.
VizAuto drives efficiency across every department of a dealership: accounting, fixed ops, variable ops, and marketing.
If you’d like to learn more about VizAuto you can check them out at www.Viz-Auto.com
So that’s it for this week’s Future of Automotive segment.
If you’re an AutoTech entrepreneur working on a solution that helps car dealerships, we want to hear from you. We are actively investing out of our DealerFund.
Don’t forget to check out my first book, “The Future of Automotive Retail,” and my brand-new book, “The Future of Mobility”, both of which are now available on Amazon.com.
Thanks (as always) for your ongoing support and for tuning into CBT News for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. We’ll see you next week!
